Underlying Themes in Popular Movies!

At work today, I was talking to a co-worker about underlying themes of popular movies we've seen.  And here are my not-thought-through-enough, half-baked ideas!

Our conversation started with Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg.  It's about a sniper who gets set up during an attempted assassination.  Think The Fugitive meets Sniper.  Seen it?  You should, it's pretty entertaining.  Anyway, it's a movie about patriotism.  An ex-military sniper feels abandoned by his government, then gets set up by a corrupt senator and former colonel-turned-mercenary-contractor.  There's a lot of subtle imagery, like Wahlberg walking slow-motion in front of an American flag.  And the secondary climax, which I won't ruin, is very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

We then moved on to Die Hard.  This series is very clearly anti-technology.  Think about it!  John McClane hates flying, is baffled by the telephones that work in airplanes, is thoroughly impressed by microwave pizza ("If you ask me, technology peaked at microwave pizza.") and, if you've seen Live Free or Die Hard, he doesn't even have a cell phone - he just takes a random civilian's.  I mean, he doesn't even need shoes to walk through fucking glass!  All he needs is a gun, a car and maybe the enemy's walkie-talkie.   Who needs a goddamn computer when you're John Fucking McClane?  Yippie-kay-yay, indeed.

From there I brought up the animated feature The Incredibles.  Superhero family, right?  Only partially!  This movies is a platform for traditional family values.  This is almost literally a nuclear family.  Think about it - a husband, a wife and 2.3 children.  The only thing that's missing is a cat and/or dog.  The husband goes to work and the wife stays home to take care of the homestead and the baby.  They get into arguments about husband's job and son's trouble at school.  The husband is discovered being "unfaithful," but in the end the family teams up at saves the entire city.  With the help of their black friend.

The Bourne Identity, briefly, is the anti-thesis of Shooter.   Where Mark Wahlberg is patriotic and aims to save himself and ultimately his country, Matt Damon seeks to separate himself from the government that ruined his entire life. 

Indiana Jones is an interesting one.  Ultimately, it's about religious fanaticism - the Nazis want a relic from biblical times, a crazy shaman wants to steal your heart for power and the Nazis are at it again looking for more biblical relics.  And then there's an educated man, who knows better, in the middle of it all stopping them.  However, it gets interesting at this point.  Not only is this about religious fanaticism, but it's from a pointedly Christian point of view - a god-fearing Christian point of view.  Opening up the Ark of the Covenant?  Don't look at it or your face will fucking MELT!  Trying to find eternal life?  You'd better have done your bible study so you don't get decapitated, fall to your death into a mysterious abyss or drink from the wrong cup and decay in seconds!  Also, don't let the crazy foreign religious shaman steal your heart or dip you into hot lava.  Please also remember to free all the slave children mining for gold!  In fact, you'd better just stay home and pray each night before you go to bed and go to church, well, religiously. 

It gets iffy with the Dirty Harry series.  My initial idea was that it's about individualism and conformity.  Harry Callahan does things his own way and it inevitably makes him miserable.  He hates authority and has a very basic idea of justice.  He will not hesitate to shoot you in the face. 

Anyway, that's as far as we got today.  I think it's a pretty good start.  I know there are a lot of movies out there I didn't cover, but this conversation spanned about 10 minutes in total.  So - not at all bad given the amount of time were wasting.  Given more time, we could've come up with more crazy bullshit. 

Give me your input!